{"id":14511,"date":"2010-07-30T10:23:14","date_gmt":"2010-07-30T16:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lemodesittjr.com\/?p=14511"},"modified":"2010-07-30T10:23:14","modified_gmt":"2010-07-30T16:23:14","slug":"the-e-book-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lemodesittjr.com\/2010\/07\/30\/the-e-book-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"The E-Book Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For several years now, various prophets have predicted that e-books would be the wave of the future, and\u2026 lo and behold, Amazon.com has just recently announced that for the first time ever for some period, e-books outsold hardcovers.\u00a0 It\u2019s to be expected that Amazon would be the first outlet to report such news, given Amazon\u2019s emphasis on e-books and its own Kindle, and given Amazon\u2019s appeal to the tech-savvy readers. But what exactly does this mean?<\/p>\n<p>Is it the great revolution in publishing\u2026 or a sign of the end of culture in the United States and the rest of the western world?\u00a0 Of course, the obvious reply to such an absurd question would be neither\u2026 but I\u2019m not so sure that the rise of e-books doesn\u2019t contain some elements of each.<\/p>\n<p>The rise in e-book sales, especially given the marketing models and patterns in the publishing industry, is going to have a very hefty impact on true professional full-time authors, and by that I mean those authors who make their living solely by writing.\u00a0 That impact is already being felt, and it\u2019s anything but positive.\u00a0 Moreover, the e-book impact is being exacerbated by other social trends, most notably the marked decrease in paperback book sales.\u00a0 According to my sources in the publishing industry, initial paperback book print runs in the F&amp;SF are averaging 40-60% fewer copies being printed than was the case for comparable books ten years ago.\u00a0 Even noted \u201cmainstream authors\u201d who sell millions of paperback books are seeing significant drops in paperback book sales numbers.<\/p>\n<p>Now that e-books are being made available, at least in my case and that of other authors, on the same day as hardcovers, any e-book sale that replaces a hard-cover sale results in a direct drop in income for the author.\u00a0 Depending on the author\u2019s royalty rates and sales numbers, that drop in income could be as little as 10 cents per copy or as high as $2.60 per copy.\u00a0 As for paperback books, the impact varies by when the e-book is sold, because the agency model has a declining price for the e-book over time.\u00a0 In general, however, authors will <strong><em>theoretically<\/em><\/strong> make more money by selling e-books than paperback books.\u00a0 That\u2019s because for the first year or so, when paperback sales are generally the highest, the e-book royalty rate may result in a higher per copy return to the author than from a paperback.\u00a0 The problem here, though, lies in three unanswered questions.\u00a0 First, how much will piracy reduce paying hardcover, paperback, and e-book sales?\u00a0 Second, will all retailers report accurately \u201cstraight\u201d download sales?\u00a0 In the case of paperbacks, there is inventory control because the retailer either has to pay for the book or return the stripped cover for a return refund.\u00a0 Physical items provide for a check against intentional undercounting. \u00a0What checks exist for an electronic item with no physical presence?\u00a0 Third, what happens after several years when the e-book price drops to essentially nothing?\u00a0 At that point, the author\u2019s backlist sales revenues plummet, and the so-called \u201clong-tail\u201d provides far less revenue than would a paperback.<\/p>\n<p>The other problem is the proliferation of \u201creader\u201d platforms.\u00a0 Until or unless this situation is rectified and standardized formats compatible across readers are instituted, there will be very few independent electronic \u201csmall presses.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Based on what I\u2019ve seen so far, although it\u2019s likely to take several years to sort itself out, the combination of e-books and existing reading\/publishing trends is going to result in an increasing decline in the number of midlist authors who are able to support themselves by writing, as well as a decline in the income of A-list writers.<\/p>\n<p>As for the impact on reading and cultural trends\u2026 that\u2019s an area where there are far fewer hard facts, but I speculate, and it\u2019s purely speculation at this point, that the results will be mixed.\u00a0 The screen readers, such as the Kindle and the Nook and all the others, are already a boon to older readers because they can enlarge the type, and more and more older readers are finding this greatly increases what is available for them to read.\u00a0 Since these readers are more interested, in general, in reading than in whipping through stripped-down action novels and the like, they will support to some degree continuation of more traditional books.\u00a0 On the other hand, a considerable number of the younger generations, who are more likely to be involved in screen-multi-tasking, already have manifested a certain impatience with novelistic complexity that isn\u2019t reflected in \u201caction\u201d magic or technology.\u00a0 Whether this will result in even greater pressure for action-oriented simplicity in the e-book market remains to be seen, but the vampire\/supernatural crazes in bookselling suggests strongly that may well be the case.<\/p>\n<p>As with most revolutions, a lot of innocents are going to be affected, and not necessarily positively, from readers to writers to small publishers\u2026 and I\u2019ve probably only touched the surface here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For several years now, various prophets have predicted that e-books would be the wave of the future, and\u2026 lo and behold, Amazon.com has just recently announced that for the first time ever for some period, e-books outsold hardcovers.\u00a0 It\u2019s to be expected that Amazon would be the first outlet to report such news, given Amazon\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lemodesittjr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lemodesittjr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lemodesittjr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lemodesittjr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lemodesittjr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lemodesittjr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14512,"href":"https:\/\/www.lemodesittjr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14511\/revisions\/14512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lemodesittjr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lemodesittjr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lemodesittjr.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}